Petition for better commuter trains for the North

hstudent

The petition is against the use of 1980s bus style trains that were built for rural use being used on busy commuter services in places including Manchester, Liverpool, Preston, Lancaster and Newcastle. The trains were built by British Rail mainly for rural services in the South West but somewho finished up running commuter services in to the UK's third largest city, due to poor organisation by DfT?

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/northtrains/

anyfreebies

Signed. Although it fails to mention that the Pacer (bus style) trains used go on journeys equivalent to London to Bristol in length. There are also a few of these units that are used by First Great Western in the South West as a short-term capacity booster on short journeys while some new trains are being built. That caused huge fuss when they went down there including people complaining of motion sickness.

Sidmon

Having seen some of the vandalism that occurs around Liverpool, Warrington and Manchester I'm not surprised they're still using those old "nodding donkey's".

hstudent

Arriva Trains Wales have much better trains based at Chester which aren't any safer from vandalism than the nodding donkeys. In fact proprotionally places like Hull and Nottingham have more crime than cities like Liverpool and Newcastle.

rev_henry

THANK YOU OP. About time. For the last 5 years I've been going to school every day on these relics of the 1980s. 142s, 158s etc. You're right its all Northern Rail's fault. They're the ones that run these old things, and claim to be cash strapped, despite having Serco as a parent company, which is on the FTSE 100, and being one of the largest rail operators in the UK. Even their own staff agree. I now drive to school. And get paid by my local council in lieu of a free train pass to do so. So much for the government trying to get us out of our cars.

anyfreebies

I think the Department of Transport need to do more for the north of England as well. There's all these Thameslink, Crossrail and bullet train things going on in the South East and all we get in the North is a few electrified lines and as soon as they are electrified we'll get the old electric Thameslink trains, so electrification seems to be just for the purpose of sending old London based trains up north.

hstudent

Sidmon wrote: »

Having seen some of the vandalism that occurs around Liverpool, Warrington and Manchester I'm not surprised they're still using those old "nodding donkey's".

If you type 'vandalised trains' in to Google all the results are in the South East, which include:
http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04/grafitti-train-415x235.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42040000/jpg/_42040646_graffiti203bodyjpg.jpg (in Surrey)

So on your reasoning let's send the old trains down to the South East.

hstudent

I've just come across this YouTube video of one of the 1980s bus style trains on a Leeds-Rochdale-Manchester service towards the end of last year and it doesn't look the worse of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI5sv_FaNtQ